Campus tour reveals the things you can't tell from test scores

STOCKTON - Leaders from opposite ends of Stockton's educational spectrum went for a walk recently.

Roger Phillips

STOCKTON - Leaders from opposite ends of Stockton's educational spectrum went for a walk recently.

It began early one morning when Lynn Beck arrived at the gritty corner of Broadway Avenue and Main Street in southeast Stockton, where Renee Sweeden was waiting. The two had never met.

Beck is dean of the Benerd School of Education at the leafy campus of University of the Pacific. Only five miles yet a world away, Sweeden is principal of Roosevelt Elementary, one of the lowest-performing schools in California.

The meeting was arranged by The Record to give an outside educational expert an opportunity to take a tour and share her impressions of the ongoing efforts to try to turn around Roosevelt.

First, they sat and talked, Beck asking questions about Roosevelt's challenges and then listening to Sweeden's answers.

The school's problems are many. The student population is socioeconomically disadvantaged. Many children are English learners. Families come and go. Sweeden estimates one-third of the school's students are different from one year to the next.

Gangs, crime and drugs are realities. The chaos in some of their homes adds to the appeal of being at school.

"This is sometimes the safest place for many of the kids," Sweeden told Beck. "When we get that child, this is the place they want to be because they don't want to be out there. And so take that and cultivate that, and that's what we talk a lot about."

One of Roosevelt's greatest challenges has been staff turnover. Half of the school's 20 teachers departed after last school year, casualties of Stockton Unified's budget crunch. Some of the replacements experienced culture shock when they arrived, Sweeden said.

"Like what?" Beck asked.

"Students that come to them and they may not have eaten all weekend," Sweeden said. "Or students whose parents are in jail for maybe the fourth or fifth time. Or behaviors where a student is pretty much, he's the parent of the younger siblings. So when that child gets into the classroom, when somebody else tries to tell that child what to do, the child is, like, 'I'm the adult here, man. Who are you talking to like this?' "

The tour

Beck and Sweeden left the office for a campus tour. They stopped by classrooms where topics ranged from 9/11 to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to SpongeBob Squarepants.

In Donna Mittelstedt's eighth-grade class, students worked on a project about the Roman Colosseum. They were placed in groups according to individual strengths, a way of organizing the students based on coaching provided by Equity In Access, an educational consultant. Beck endorsed the approach.

"Within these classrooms, there are a lot of power differentials, not just the teachers and the students, but students to students, more able students and so on," Beck said. "The idea is that every student is able in different ways, and that by tapping into that and sort of organizing classes in particular ways, it's a huge engagement thing, it's a huge competence and confidence thing."

Sheryl Simmons engaged her fourth-graders by using SpongeBob to draw them into a lesson on using descriptive words in their writing. Describe SpongeBob, Simmons said.

"He has a tie," a student observed.

"He has a tie," Simmons said. "But what color tie?"

"Red," the student said.

"Why is he dotted?"

"He's a sponge."

The students did not lose their focus when Sweeden, Beck and two other visitors dropped by.

"It wasn't like that last year," Sweeden whispered to Beck.

"They were not distracted," Beck said. "First, that's good discipline. But also, they're engaged with learning."

Roseline Seporgan's second-grade class was learning about heroes. Dr. King was the launching point. Brandy DeAlba's eighth-grade English class watched a movie about 9/11, which would lead to lessons on racism, anti-Semitism and a reading of Anne Frank's diary. Beck praised the teachers for maintaining their creativity in spite of the rigid demands posed by curriculum and pacing guides.

At one point, Beck stopped and told Sweeden, "What I like about what you're doing is, there are ways to work on test scores that just turn them around quickly. You can come in and do a lot of memorizing and all this. But you're not doing that. It's good, though. It's hard. But you're going for the deeper stuff. You could teach trained monkeys to take these tests. It's just behaviorism, basically, instead of really deep thinking."

After the tour, out of Sweeden's presence, Beck discussed what she had seen. She had been impressed by the work to engage students and to build a community at the school, but also by the attention being paid to building the students' use of language and vocabulary.

"We know that low-income kids come to school speaking several thousand words less than high-income kids because they have not been in as language-rich an environment for all sorts of reasons," Beck said. "Sometimes it's cultural, sometimes it's just lack of adults in the home because the family is working and that kind of thing."

Beck and Sweeden may not have seen the last of each other.

Beck said she would be "very happy" sending student teachers to Roosevelt because she was impressed by the instructional practices she observed.

She also said Pacific might have access to grants that could help the cash-strapped school. Not long after the visit, Beck and Sweeden became Facebook friends.

The efforts of Sweeden, her staff and Roosevelt's students ultimately will be judged by the school's ability to improve its standardized test scores.

Roosevelt gained only two Academic Performance Index points in Sweeden's first year, and its 578 score is the lowest of any K-8 school in Stockton Unified.

Beck said she believes the school's efforts eventually will bear fruit.

"They're doing everything right," Beck said. "By all of my predictions, they will see growth. ... But there's a lot going on in a community, and when I think about the past few years in this neighborhood and I think about the foreclosure crisis and the unemployment that has really helped to escalate some of the other issues - in Stockton in general and south Stockton in particular - I think a steady hold is a win.

"Kind of like 'Rocky,' I think they're going the distance. And that needs to be celebrated a little bit instead of punished."